Card-style printed board assemblies are typically used to contain electronics components in an electronics enclosure. These electronics cards may contain off-the-shelf or custom electronics components, such as central processing units (CPUs), application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs), field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs), digital signal processors (DSPs), network processors, graphics processing units (GPUs), memory units, communication interfaces, communication busses, and so on. These components normally produce heat when active. Electronics cards containing such heat-producing electronics may be used, for example, in the fields of avionics, transportation, or communications.
As newer electronics components exhibiting improved performance are developed, they also may draw more electrical power and produce more heat than previous generations of electronics components. This additional heat needs to be dissipated or removed from the cards and the chassis in order to ensure that the electronics system does not overheat. Furthermore, electronics systems may be deployed in an environment that is subject to significant vibration, such as a commercial or military aircraft. Thus, modern electronics system design calls for addressing at least the problems of providing heat dissipation for the electronics components on the electronics cards as well as structural support for the electronics cards and the chassis in the presence of vibration.
Current off-the-shelf convection cooling and conduction cooling technologies both individually fail to solve all of these problems. Thus, an improved method of cooling these types of systems is desirable.